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Feb 9th, 2008 at 03:05:08 - The Witcher (PC) |
GAMEPLAY
I got to dive a lot deeper into the game this time around. The combat continues to disappoint me. It didn’t quite become a problem until I started spending a lot of time fighting. The combat seemed so repetitive. It was like I was fighting the same battle no matter what kind of enemy I was fighting. However, this game is much more then just combat, so I didn’t let the issue ruin my experience. What the game does have is a very detailed potion system. Potions are very important in The Witcher and they play a greater role then in an average RPG. The player chooses which potions to carry on hand, which are instantly ready for use. They could choose health restoring potions, potions that make Geralt stronger, faster or smarter, or potions which give bonuses against certain enemies. But the game doesn’t present the potions as simple buffs. To explain, I’ll have to dive into the lore of the game.
As I said before, this game contains a very detailed fantasy world which is cataloged in the player’s journal. But the lore is not just background story; the lore is actually a part of the gameplay. For example, each potion is made of different ingredients, which have different properties and components. To make a potion, first I had to buy a book on plants and another on monsters in the area. Each would tell me about the monsters and also tell me which parts of their bodies are useful. For example, a ghoul has poison glands in their neck and teeth, so you can loot those items. You can then use them as components to make a poison potion. But the poison is a little more then that. To make the potion, you need a base extracted by a root found in the wild. To do this, I need the herb book. This may seem tedious, but it was actually a lot of fun. It felt a lot more immersive, and that’s what I find fun. The game could just say this is a potion of +10 to attack rating. But instead they say it is an eagle eye potion with an alcohol base which drugs the user into a type of trance which seems to slow down time and heighten reactions. It’s the little details that make the game for me, and the Witcher has those.
DESIGN
The first issue I’ll address is the combat. I’m a big fan of action RPGs and I also like to play melee based classes. The problem I have is that melee combat usually just consists of clicking on enemies to attack them with no further interaction. When I first heard of the rhythm based combat of The Witcher, I was excited because it seemed like I would get a lot more input into what used to be dull combat. However, I still found the combat dull, even though I seemingly had a greater role. But then I realized why. The combo system works by clicking again once you finish your previous strike. So the rhythm of combat is the same series of combos every time. It’s always the same rhythm! It doesn’t matter what you are fighting, it’s the same battle every time. Ideally, I would want the rhythm to be different which every combo and every different monster. That would feel more like the chaos of a battle and would take more skill. The rhythm feature of this game got me to thinking about Guitar Hero. What if every song in Guitar Hero sounded different, but the button inputs where the same every time, not matter what the song? Now that would be a dull music game. That’s how I feel about The Witcher’s combat.
But this game is not all bad. I spoke highly of the game lore and world before and I will do so again. This game is actually based on a Polish fantasy novel, so I found it interesting that is this appendix like journal is in the game. A video game doesn’t always feature so much written word that needs to be sorted through. It almost felt to me as if the journal was like the novel itself, describing the game world around me in vivid detail. But once I closed the journal screen, the world from the text came to life before my eyes. The relationship was not too profound, but it got me thinking about narrative and games, which we talked about in class today. Would it be too radical to have some kind of story that is outlined in written form, like a novel, but then opens into a game where the player physically plays out the story? Maybe that’s what games always have been, and to draw attention to it in that way would be awkward. But nevertheless, I still see a interesting relationship between the written lore of The Witcher and the gameplay itself.
One other small issue I have with the game is its depth. The inventory and character development is very complicated. There is a lot of information available in the manual and in the tutorial part of the game, but I found myself checking back to this information a lot more often then I would have liked. I’m all for a deep game, but when the game is too complicated to just pick up and play, then that’s a problem. I don’t quite want the game to do it all for me, however, because then what is the point of playing an RPG? I could just play an action game. A good balance I think would be an inventory and character development which is simple and easy to understand, but has advanced features which are under the hood, optional, or become relevant once the player experiments a little. I think then the hardcore role-player would be happy, as well as the more casual player.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Feb 9th, 2008 at 19:22:19.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 22:55:50 - The Witcher (PC) |
SUMMARY:
The Witcher is a role playing game where the player takes control of Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer called a Witcher. The Witcher offers a rich and dark fantasy world based on a Polish legend. The dark and “in your face” story tackles mature issues such as racism, terrorism, sex and rape. The game itself is designed with the Aurora engine first featured in Neverwinter Nights II. It offers a detailed if not complicated real time role-playing experience where the player can specialize in many different areas such as combat, magic or potion making to overcome the game’s obstacles.
GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay of The Witcher is very standard for a PC role-playing game. There are three camera modes available. Low and high isometric provides an overhead view of the action and the OTS (Over the Shoulder) view puts the camera behind Geralt, more effectively placing the player in the middle of the action. I decided to play with an OTS view because I wanted more immersion as opposed to more strategic control. I played my way through the prologue, which served as an extended tutorial on the game play.
The game HUD was unique, detailed and complicated at the same time. The game features a mini map in the upper right corner, along with button which opens up the character sheet, inventory and journal. All of these options do not seem radically different from other RPGs. One difference is that there is only one character class available, the hero class. However, the player has the option to grow their character with experience points in any way they wish. They can choose to build a combat focused hero, or perhaps a magically focused character. There are a lot of options open and the character growth is very deep. The journal is also a great addition to the game world. It allows the player to keep track of all their active quests, but also keep enters on characters, monsters, places, terms and items. This fictional world has a very rich background which can be discovered by the player and added into this book.
Combat, on the other hand, seemed like a bland process. To attack an enemy, I merely had to click on them and Geralt would run over to attack. The mouse cursor would appear as a sword, and upon a queue, I would click again to start a combination attack. I was also given the choice of different attack styles. I could choose between powerful attacks that have a high chance of missing, quick weak attacks or attacks that damage a group. This system seems like it offers a lot of player input, but I didn’t find it to be that engaging. The area I explored had only one type of enemy, one that required quick attacks. So instead of combat merely being clicking on an enemy to attack, it became merely clicking on an enemy in a rhythm. The problem is that the rhythm is the same every time. So I wondered why the designers even put the combo system into the game in the first place.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 9th, 2008 at 19:24:05.
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Jan 26th, 2008 at 03:03:47 - The Legend of Zelda (NES) |
GAMEPLAY
My second round of gameplay was both very rewarding and also very frustrating. I started out the session finding the sixth dungeon, which I was able to enter despite not yet finding dungeons two through five. I had to navigate a maze to get to this dungeon. The only way to solve it was to pay another character to tell you the way through. Then I found the dungeon. Unfortunately, I was killed by some sword throwing centaur like creatures. These swords caused two hearts of damage, and I had four (you get another heart after beating each boss). So I could only take two hits before dying. And these monsters threw swords as if they had some sort of sword machine gun. So I was killed. And I continued to go back only to be killed again and again.
But I did not give up and made it to the next dungeon. Unfortunately again, I found I needed to bypass two locked doors and was only given one key. I found a bunch of merchants who sell keys at high prices, so I figured I’d just come back. So I was back to wondering around the map looking for dungeons. There were more merchants, some gamblers and some “wise men.” They had semi-helpful advice for finding more over priced merchants and so it was just luck when I ran into the next dungeon. I cleared it out with little trouble. The boss was too tough to fight with a sword, but a wise man hinted that the monster hated smoke, and so I made short work of it with a few bombs. Another thing I found about this dungeon was that the monsters dropped a lot of money, so all those items were now buyable.
So I bought a stronger shield and headed back to the dungeon to get more money to buy a key for that dungeon I was stuck in earlier. Yet again, disaster struck, as I couldn’t find the dungeon again. I aimlessly wandered around looking for the dungeon and I just couldn’t find it. I was really missing a map at that point. There was just nothing to reference myself too. I eventually found another dungeon and just continued on.
I did some research online on the game and found that a key component of the game was the manual and map that came with the original game. Earlier, the game told me to look up items in the manual and that it contained all sort of tips and tricks for finding dungeons. And it also had a real map with landmarks. I really missed having this manual a lot during my session. I felt like I would have made it through a lot faster if I had that information. Because for me, I felt like I was shooting in the dark and I only knew what I was looking for because I was already familiar with the story and goals. There is an interesting relationship between the game and the package. The game is very hard to play without the manual. However, the designer never expected the player not to have the manual. A poor design choice perhaps?
DESIGN
I figure I’ll jump right into the manual issue. Now, the idea of the manual being so integral to the gameplay is an interesting one. The idea of using physical objects in the game is definitely something that should be explored. Having a physical map in front of you to navigate a fictional world makes the entire experience much more immersive. Instead of instructions of how to play, the manual seems like somewhat of a guidebook, almost as if it was part of the game itself. Knowing how popular the game was when it came out, I imagine knowing how to get through this game was a revered skill. So if someone did get stuck, I guess they could just ask the local master for some advice. It that why, the gameplay almost becomes part of the community. I wonder if this was intentional, or maybe the manual was just an afterthought after they figured out how difficult this game was.
These are some of the strong points, but I experienced first hand the weaknesses of the approach. It was very hard to me to play this game. I felt like I was just wondering around, waiting for something to present itself. I bet I could have found that dungeon I lost again if I had a helpful map with me. And was it wise for the designers to assume that every player would have access to this map? I played this game on my Wii, a situation that the designers never could have foreseen. But what if the game was lent to me by someone, without the manuals? For what if I checked these games out from the library? Without access to these supplemental parts of the game, my experience was much less enjoyable. I imagine if I were a less then serious game player, I would have walked away from this game.
The difficultly of the Legend of Zelda may have been a help though. Perhaps the notoriety of this game caused players to rise to the challenge and try harder to beat it. I know when I was playing, I was frustrated, but I didn’t give up. I had a desire to keep playing, to see it through, even when I kept dying over and over again. I cannot deny that this game was incredibly popular, so the designers must have done something right.
Besides these issues, the game really was a lot of fun. Zelda is a classic game, and I already fell in love with the gameplay long ago. But even without the manual issue, I had trouble. Enemies would switch back and forth from being too easy and way too hard. I felt like I would get stronger to combat the stronger monsters, but the transition did not feel as smooth as it was in later Zelda games. All the game play introduced in this game is common place now, but for the time, it was something new and exciting. I can at least tell it was new, because it felt loose and sloppy at places. But I don’t mean that as a bad thing. To me it proved that the designers were trying something new. As a last note, I enjoyed being able to tackle the dungeons in any order I wished, or rather the order I discovered them. That non-linear gameplay helped to make mean feel like I was really in another world, a real world.
This entry has been edited 3 times. It was last edited on Jan 26th, 2008 at 23:04:08.
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Jan 25th, 2008 at 23:27:44 - The Legend of Zelda (NES) |
SUMMARY:
The Legend of Zelda is a classic action-adventure fantasy game. The action takes place in the fantasy land of Hyrule. The player controls Link, a young hero determined to rescue the Princess Zelda from the evil Ganon. To do this, Link must collect the 8 pieces of the magical triforce, which is hidden in 8 dungeons. The player must use Link’s items and sword fighting skills to defeat the monsters and solve the puzzles standing between Link and Zelda.
GAMEPLAY
I was already very familiar to the game play of The Legend of Zelda. The series has a very long history and I have played most of the series’ games. The action is viewed from an isometric perspective, where the player can view their avatar, the iconic Link. The HUD consists of a simple world map, with just a dot to show the players’ current area. There are no land marks, so all the player knows is their relation to the boundaries of the entire world. There is also a life bar, which comes in the form of hearts, and two item boxes, one for each button. There are also counters for the player’s bombs, keys and rupees, the currency of Hyrule.
Upon starting the game, I was give little instruction or back story. I waited at the start menu, and a screen told me to rescue the princess by getting the triforce. And then it showed me a picture of every item and to look in the manual for details. When I started the adventure proper, I was put in the middle of the world with a shield and no instruction. I found a sword in a cave in a nearby cave and was then able to fight monsters. With no apparent direction, I just started to wander around. I encountered monsters in groups of two or three which I could easily defeat with my sword. But it wasn’t longer before I found myself overwhelmed against groups of four or more monster.
I was very surprised to find this game to be tremendously difficult. Starting off, I had only three hearts, and most attacks take away a half of a heart, so about six hits. Sometimes, enemies would drop heats or fearies, which would heal Link, but it didn’t seem to happen often enough. I would find myself wandering around with one heart or maybe even a half of heart. It seemed like a strange mechanic, because I could mostly only get more life by killing enemies, but I didn’t want to fight with enemies because of my low life. It’s strange that I have never run into this problem in the later games, perhaps because of the addition of hearts inside of bushes and pots.
Eventually I discovered the entrance to a dungeon. Inside was a series a rooms and puzzles. The typical structure was to find a locked door and a path that lead to a dead end. The trick was the keys was somewhere along that dead end. The keys were pretty easy to find. Most puzzles consisted of finding the right block to push, or killing all the enemies. I also found my first items, some bombs and a boomerang. The boomerang became my favorite. Combat became much easier as I would use it to stun and enemy, and then finish it off with my sword. I came to a boss, and easily defeated it with bombs. It’s strange how some fights where so hard, while others where so easy. With my first piece of the triforce in hand, I set off to find the next dungeon.
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